


it's not a miracle we needed

by attonitos_gloria



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Casterly Rock, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Love Confessions, Mild Sexual Content, Mostly Fluff, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-18
Packaged: 2019-08-03 19:02:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16331741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/attonitos_gloria/pseuds/attonitos_gloria
Summary: There is always one who loves more.He knows it will be him, always, in any season; there’s no doubt in his mind about it.[Sansa and Tyrion, finding love in Casterly Rock.]





	it's not a miracle we needed

**Author's Note:**

> I'm in a bad week and I needed to write a fluffly, almost-angst-free one-shot for these two. the lyrics come from "1901" by phoenix (here is [birdy's cover](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlaeJ6k75cY), which greatly inspired this work).

  
  
  
  


i. _counting all different ideas drifting away_  
_past and present, they don't matter: now the future's sorted out_

Sansa gets lost for a whole month before she finally asks for help.

“Do you actually know this place by heart?”

Tyrion lifts up his eyes from the parchment, just a little startled by the sound of her voice. From their short marriage in King’s Landing, he remembers that she was quiet, but now she moves like a _ghost_ , invisible and mute. It feels like he is being constantly watched.

“Oh, there you are,” he says with a veiled rebuke. “Well, yes. I spent my childhood here.”

Her hair is combed in northerner style, one single braid resting over one shoulder, the tips getting almost to the level of her left breast. He knows for a fact that her handmaiden tried to taught her how to do it in western fashion but then, again, the girl is a wolf, stubborn as hell. There are little strands escaping from the sides of her face and the base of her head, tangled up by the violent winds coming from the sea. It’s lovely, a wild kind of lovely, but he will give her another month to give up and start to wear it with the coils up – for practical reasons.

(The darkness is washing out from her hair slowly. Instead of just revealing the red flames around her, the black dye cedes one day at a time, the strands now looking more copper than the lively, bright auburn it used to be. 

Or maybe is just the winter sun, stealing the color and the life out of things.)

“I need a map,” she states, managing to sound proud still. He smirks with the corner of his mouth. “One of those days I won’t come back, and the blame will rest solely on you.”

His smirk slowly fades, because he has this image – of waiting for her at night in their chambers, alone, and not knowing where she is, or how she is. He imagines cold, bony, slender hands keeping her as a hostage in the depths of the Rock, along with every other Lannister ghost, even the ones who aren’t buried here. (He has always assumed Lannister souls would find their way back to Casterly Rock, wherever their bodies were kept, if such thing as a soul existed).

Tywin, and Joanna, and Jaime, and Cersei, and Joffrey –

Joffrey. “I’ll provide one for you,” he promises.

She lies down gracefully on the carpet at his feet, next to the table where he is trying to work, resting her head on the nearest cushion and staring at the flames in the hearth. (The furs are thick and soft, as comfortable as a mattress. She had fallen asleep there in two or three occasions since her arrival. At first, he thought she just wanted to sleep away from him. But one night, after two too many cups of wine, he ended up sleeping by her side and woke up with her arm carelessly thrown over his chest. So.) “Did you know,” she begins, “that the Targaryen cast spells in the walls of their buildings, so one could talk even in whispers and be heard from great distances? Therefore no servants or maids or enemies could ever speak treason or keep secrets from the King.”

She is reading about architecture these days – about all kinds of buildings from Westeros and beyond, and how to draw a map, and how to plan a garden, but maybe he needs to recommend her a different set of books. “This is no magic, my lady,” he answers, trying to suppress his smile. She throws her head back to look at him. “This is just engineering. Although it does sound like the perfect engineering to appease Targaryen paranoia.”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t be silly, my lord. Of course it's magic. How could you listen to someone speaking in whispers from afar?”

It takes all his strength, in the present moment, to _not_ get up, hold her chin, kiss her. He shrugs, instead. “Apparently you just need to calculate the ratio of the curves, the distance between the walls, and choose the right material.”

She blinks, once, and then twice. “It is annoying to talk to you about things. You have an answer to everything,” she sighs.

His smile is free, now, because she is just _adorable_ when she is upset. “That is not true. I’m just older, so I had time to read more. I will bring the book to you... Actually, there are some places here in the Rock that work just like that.”

“Really?” and her voice gets excited, almost childish. 

“Really. I can show you on the map.”

She looks at the fire again. “ _You_ should take me there.”

“I should.” He looks up from the letter once more. Her braid is tossed like a red snake coming out from her head against the golden cushion and her blue eyes catch the flames in a way that make them look Lannister-green, if a man had hope enough to see it. “So. What have you found out today?”

“A balcony in the northerner wing. And a garden growing on a cliff, looking east.” She makes a pause. “There were no flowers, but it was beautiful, exotic. Very... _Green_.”

He resumes his work. “Yes. A Lannister custom, I think.” Since Joanna died, no servants were allowed to grow flowers inside the Rock. Lord Tywin forbade it; Tyrion never cared to change the rules. _Maybe I should_ , he thinks, looking at Sansa's purple dress: _lavender, verbena, catnips._

She peeks at him with the corner of her eyes. “I've noticed.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


ii. _watch you're moving in elliptical pattern_  
_think it's not what you say, what you say is way too complicated_  
_for a minute, thought I couldn't tell how to fall out_

They invented a new game – Sansa invented it, actually, as an attempt to distract him in his worst days, when grief and past hit him, when his mood is the worst and he is also inclined to drink more than necessary. Sansa knows best than to ask him what plagues his conscience. Instead, she took advantage of one of his talents – Tyrion is, as she found out, a very good drawer. And so she describes places, people, animals and flowers, providing him with great amounts of details as he brings to life whatever inspires her imagination. Most of the time she creates new things, or borrows from the books he brings to her; there are too many tender topics, painful to touch, between them, to use real samples. But Sansa likes the way he is focused, tilts his head, how he pays attention to her every word without even looking at her – he rarely does, anyway, always hidden behind his books. It is surprising, for her, that such a gnarled, normally clumsy person is able to be so _delicate_ , but she can’t think about any other way to describe the way the holds the charcoal and draws the edges, the curves, adapting the pressure of his hand to create a illusion of depth. (He has beautiful hands, she can’t help but notice when he takes his gloves off. When they travel her skin they are delicate, too, feather-light and gentleness; he acts as if she will break, or run away, if he makes any sudden moves.) Sansa doesn’t know why, but there’s something fascinating, almost beautiful in him when he frowns his brow in concentration. She supposes is just that kind of charm that people display when they are involved with a task that they love. A surrender, of sorts.

She likes to watch him, more than she likes the result of his work, although he is really talented. She keeps his drawings with her – castles and knights and birds.

But grief hits Sansa, too. One night she is describing a castle thoughtlessly and both of them realize halfway that is Winterfell. She notices sooner than him, of course; suddenly the tower she is describing sounds familiar, the stair growing outside it like a scarf around your neck, and she thinks, _this is the Library Tower_ , and then wonders, _what if it's not there anymore_. There's no way to know. Her voice quivers, just a little, but she carries on. She hopes he won’t remember but he does, looks up to look her in the eye. His face is gilded by the candlelight next to them on the table and for a moment, Sansa thinks they will uncover it, the elephant in the room. 

“You were saying,” he mutters, and they continue.

He gets up to wash the black dirt from his fingers when he is done, and she stares at the window, the sea out there, waves crashing in against the rocks, everything black but the wake of moonlight over the ocean. 

For a moment she thinks about throwing his drawing into the flames. But he comes back, approaches her carefully, places a hand on her back. “Sansa,” he says, and she turns around to the sound of his voice. “Would you like–”

“I am well,” Sansa mutters. (She hates to cry in front of him; he hides away to cry, too. They both know it.) “Do not worry, my lord.”

“But I do,” he sighs. “We can talk, if you need to.” 

_No_ , Sansa thinks. _No, we can't._ “I don't want to talk,” she answers, but there's a tear in her voice that suggests that she wants something else.

They need loneliness, sometimes. But not all the time. And so he pulls her hand until she relents and guides them to the bed, and she knows how to find her way: she knows his arms are not short enough to keep him from wrapping them around her shoulders, that her face adjusts to the crook of his neck, that his chest is warm and broader than one might have guessed. There's room for her in him, little as he is, and when he holds her and she hides wordlessly in his embrace she can't help but think that sometimes, occasionally, they seem to fit. If he is misshapen, so is she.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


iii. _watch them build up a meteor tower_  
_think it's not gonna stay, anyway, I think it's overrated_

It's a lazy, cold afternoon when he decides to at last show her the mysterious magic walls: an abandoned corner hewn out of stone by the years and the winds coming from the sea, improved by men, broken by the storms and old battles, half-destroyed, half-open to the western skies, and now empty and useless. At night the tides flood the building up until half the second floor, but he and Jaime discovered a passage in the western wing of the Rock that leads directly to the fourth. And so he flees with her in the middle of the day, gives her a lit candle and takes one himself to guide their way through dark corridors and hallways, tangling his fingers in hers as they climb up some stairs, and then walk down some more. She keeps asking _where are we going_ and he keeps answering _be patient, my lady_ , until they get to a door, and when he opens it the winds comes rushing in violently against them; she holds his hand tighter. 

“Careful now,” he warns, and pulls her closer. The ground ends abruptly three yards ahead, and so Tyrion takes them both to the next floor, which is safer, covered and grounded. The waves sound like thunders around them, until they hide in a corner, where something like a cave had been sculpted, and all the noises and sounds are suddenly muffled and distant.

“What happened to the waves?” Sansa asks, worried, and looks down at him. He smirks.

“I assure you the ocean will be there when we leave, in the same place we left it,” he answers, and takes her to the exact spot where the magic happens. He drew a small circle on it, on the ground. It's still there, after all these years. “Now stay here,” he says, and lets go of her hand.

“Where are you going?” She asks, frightened, and he comes back two steps just to hold her hand once more.

“Don't worry. I will come back to you. Just stay exactly where you are.”

And so he leaves and walks, and walks, and walks, deeper and deeper into the Rock until he finds the other circle on the ground, the one Jaime drew a lifetime ago. Here he can't listen to anything – winds or waves. But he _can_ hear her feet knocking anxiously on the floor.

“Sansa?” he murmurs. “Talk to me.”

At first she doesn't, but this is precisely the reaction he was expecting.

“It’s here,” she says – not screaming, just speaking, and yet he listens; not like a vague echo, but words unmistakable and clear, and in the moment, also a little bit stunned.

“Yes.” 

“I'm listening to your voice. As if you were right here by my side.”

He smiles, rests his back on the wall behind him, and wishes he could see her face now. “I can listen to you, too.”

“And I’m not even seeing you.”

“Me neither.” He’s not sure he hid it well, the _lament_ , but thank the gods she is too perplex to notice it.

“Oh gods. Your steps just _disappeared_ and then– then your voice just came out of _nowhere_. How far away we are from each other?”

He stops, calculates his steps. “I would say about two hundred yards?”

“Are you sure it’s not magic?”

“No spells cast. Only accidental architectural acoustics.”

“I’m bewildered. Does it still work if I move?”

“No. You need to stay right there.”

“All right! So I won’t move.”

“Don’t move.”

And there’s a silence.

“The West is not a terrible place to live,” her voice finally reaches him. “I think I like it here.”

Once, he remembers, he had some pride about the Rock, but when Sansa Stark defines his homeland as _not a terrible place_ , really, he can only laugh. “Hm. Do you,” he asks, suspiciously, looking at the ceiling.

“I do.” He listen to her feet against the dusty ground, small steps. She is walking in circles, seemingly.

“And what do you find so charming about this place that makes it not that terrible to live?” He crosses his arms against his chest. “Cold, dark towers with amazing acoustics?”

She chortles, and he pictures her face, the dimples in her cheeks, the freckles covering her nose. “I like to listen to the waves in the morning. And we can see the sunset over the ocean, too. I even like that weird birds we saw the other day.”

He didn’t even notice he was smiling again until he lets an involuntary chuckle escape past his lips. “Auks?” She adored them.

“Auks,” she confirms. “They are just... delightful.”

“They are.” Gods. She makes him feel so damn _young_ sometimes. “So. Is that your favorite part? Seabirds?”

“No.” Her voice is small, almost shy. “That would be you.” 

He misses a breath, and feels terribly scared, terribly in love with her, all at once.

“My lord? Are you there?”

“Here.” He bites his lower lip because, honestly, this smile is starting to hurt his cheeks. “Still here.”

“Are you smiling now?”

He rolls his eyes. “Yes.”

(There is always one who loves more.

He knows it will be him, always, in any season; there’s no doubt in his mind about it.

He wonders if he should be bothered by this knowledge. He isn't, really; it just seems natural. Sansa is the kind of girl who deserves _not_ to be the one who loves more.)

“I know you would probably prefer to be married to anyone else in the world,” she says, and he can’t read her face – can’t imagine how she must look like, can’t decipher her voice; can’t think about one single reason why she would think that. Maybe he should start telling her, all these things he keeps thinking ( _‘you are the loveliest thing in my world at the moment’_ and _‘I wish I was strong like you; teach me how’_ and _‘you know, I've only been this happy once in my life, and it was so long ago’_ and _‘where did you learn to laugh like that’_ and _‘kiss me again, please, it’s all I’m asking’_ ).

“That is not true,” he summarizes. It seems easier.

“–but I wouldn't. I'm glad they brought me back to you.”

It's not as good as she giving herself away, but he will have it.

“I don't want you to leave.” _Leave me_ , he means, but he is not as brave as Sansa; he has never been. “I don't know what suggested I feel anything but ecstatic about having you as a wife, but you are wrong,” he says, as slowly and softly as he is able, knowing he would never say anything of the sorts without two hundred yards between them. 

Her steps stop. There's a drop in his stomach of fear, and an urge to run away, but he can't leave her here, alone. “I’m just trying to say –” he listens when she catches a deep breath. “One day, I will tell you that I love you. Not today. One day.”

He presses his forehead against the wall, closes his eyes and smiles; feels like crying and laughing at the same time. “All right.”

“And when I do, I need you to believe in me.”

“That sounds fair.”

“Because I wouldn’t lie about _this_ , and because you do that a lot, you never trust me when I say gentle things about you.”

Always touching the wound, Sansa. “I will do my best to believe in you.”

“Good.” 

And there’s another silence. He doesn’t know how to face her after that, but both their candles have blown out on their way and it's getting dark. “We must come back. Stay right there, I’m coming for you.”

“My lord?” and she sounds, for the first time, nervous.

“Yes?”

“Can we pretend I never said any of those things?”

“What things?”

“Thank you.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


iv. _lie down, you know it's easy_  
_like we did it all summer long_

The windows are open, and it’s cold. He is running a finger on the inner face of her arm, delineating the veins that spread like rivers under her snowy skin. “Kiss me here,” she asks, pointing to her wrist with the hand he is not holding. He bows his head, puts his lips to the spot. Her finger slides up. “Here,” and his mouth follows.

Sansa closes her eyes, aims to her shoulder. “Here.” He obeys silently. His lips are smooth, the hands stroking her hips are shy, reluctant, but when she throws her head back into the pillows to expose her throat and whispers “here,” he kisses her neck gently until it isn’t gentle anymore. She laughs under her breath, points a finger to her right nipple. “Here.” She can feel his smile on her, the flat of his teeth, as he kisses his way down to where she wants him.

She does it mostly for his sake, so he won't be so afraid to touch her all the time. But when he travels lower and lower, no longer waiting for her command, brushes his fingers on the triangle of red curls covering her flesh before spreading her legs gently, she smiles back to him. 

Because this– oh, this is _hers_.

(Looking from this angle, his head between her legs, her skin looking paler under the moonlight, her back arching slightly off the mattress, all her curves, hills, valleys, could have been carved out from pure marble.

But she is trembling, breathless, warm.

He knows – there is nothing of stone in her.)

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


v. _and I'll be anything you ask and more_

The first time he says it, he thinks she is asleep. 

“I love you,” and nothing else. Sansa knows it is for her, about her, knows he is not dreaming or thinking out loud, because of how regretful the words sound: like there's no reason or a proper explanation, like he doesn't know how it came to happen, almost apologizing.

Her back is turned to him and she smiles against her pillow. _I know_ , she thinks, her lungs suddenly flooded with warmth. _I know you love me._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


vi. _it's not a miracle we needed_  
_no, I wouldn't let you think so_

“Are you even _listening_ to what I'm saying?,” his wife scolds, and just like that, the words disappear from his sight as she takes the book from his hands so quickly that he doesn't even have the time to complain.

“What in the seven–”

Sansa closes the pages and all but throws his book aside. “Look at me when I'm talking to you!” She says, frowning, crossing her arms on her chest and _pouting_. 

And Tyrion thinks he doesn't deserve her. He doesn't deserve her at all. 

He unwinds her arms to take her hand, brings her fingers to his lips, and smiles apologetically against her skin. “I’m sorry, my lady. I’m listening now.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
